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Ruislip 300k ride report
Last Sunday I rode 300k for the first time - and got back within time, so that's another tick in the PBP qualifying box...
The first 40k were pretty vile; not entirely sure why as it didn't seem to be particularly nasty route-wise. It was however absolutely freezing, and my feet in particular were really suffering, which I guess might have been the problem. Note to self: always take the damn overshoes. There was a point around here when I seriously considered bailing (on the grounds that if I felt this rotten now how was I going to feel in 200k time...) but thankfully a hot cross bun & squash at the first control, and the sun finally starting to provide some actual heat, improved things.
Unusually for me, I reached the Woburn control to find plenty of other riders still milling around (I have hitherto tended to be way off the back), which was also a bit cheering. A lot of the next bit was really beautiful, especially through Woburn Park where there were deer! And blue sky, trees, birds, etc etc. Pretty!
As a rule, when someone says to you "It's a lot flatter after X" they may mean one of several things:
1) I have no idea what it's like but I want to cheer you up.
2) I have no idea what it's like but I want to cheer myself up.
3) Last time I rode this there was a tailwind after X.
4) Last time I rode this I had 4 1/2 chocolate bars & 2 bananas at X so I was bloody flying.
5) I can't remember anything after X from the last time I rode this so I'm assuming that it was unexceptionable rather than that my brain is protecting me from the horror.
What they virtually never mean is:
6) It's a lot flatter after X.
However! On this occasion the chap who said this was actually, it seems, reasonably correct, & the first half of the bit after Woburn was nice and fast.
Rode with a chap on an Airnimal visiting from Hong Kong for a while - his first Audax, and he seemed to be doing pretty well. The last 20k or so to the next control (T-somewhere Farm Centre) it was getting a bit windy, and I was definitely starting to feel it.
Baked potato & beans at the Farm Centre, & a chat to various other people feeding themselves, then off for another fairly tough 40k into the wind. Arrived at the Little Chef feeling pretty wiped, but the All-Day Veggie Breakfast (which can be made vegan!) was a very good thing for revitalising purposes. Plus I put my bars back to where they had been before I started fiddling with them before the ride (oops) & found that suddenly lots of the aches went away. Evidently Mr Hewitt knows rather better than I do about bar height...
Bit of a drag out of the Little Chef control, and saddle slippage for about the millionth time had me stopping to fiddle with it. Whereupon I hooked up with a small group of riders from Willesden for a bit, which was nice. I also discovered the secret to overcoming my lack-of-nerve issues on descents: be sufficiently tired that the concern about Messy Head-Impact Death is overwhelmed by the concern about Not Wasting Any Of My Precious Potential Energy. Brakes? What're those?
It was roughly this point at which my legs started behaving themselves, at last. Inadvertently rode straight off the front of the Willesden guys (sort of assumed they were behind me, & then looked back & no sign), with very little input from the brain other than a polite suggestion that my legs might like to keep going round for a bit. 25k to the next control felt great. Baffling! Another chat with a bunch of folk at the next Little Chef (with a slightly grumpy waitress), and intended to start out with Pete, Hilary, & someone else, but turned out that my legs were still behaving & rode straight of the front there as well.
The last stage was 60k, of which about 45k was absolutely fine, and the last 15 was OKish - not physically that much of a struggle, but mentally I was getting to the AM I NEARLY THERE YET? stage. Over the Chilterns was reasonably short-and-sharp (which I like better, I think, than long-and-gradual), and conquered without too much hassle with the lovely granny ring. Took an alternate route back (via A413, A40, B4something) on Local Advice, which was prob faster but a bit dull. Mind you, I don't like country lanes in the dark; nice big streetlit A-roads suit me better.
Brief circuit round Ruislip (whoops) & into the Arrivee. Ate sandwiches & then set off for the 30k home, having missed my last tube by about 80min. The last half of that was v tough indeed, despite nice chats with bus drivers ("Where have you been to?" "300k around Ruislip" "You are a very impressive woman!" Bless.), but worth it for pleasure of Own Shower and Own Bed. So with that & the 12k to the start from Ealing, close to 350k for the day.
It was v nice to be sufficiently of a speed with at least some folk (albeit the back markers!) that I could chat to people at controls. I quite like riding on my own on Audaxes (partly because it's about the only time I get to spend on my own ever when I'm not supposed to be Doing Something; partly because I like to let my legs set their own pace) but it's reassuring to encounter other people at intervals. Also I think this is the first Audax I've done that I wasn't lanterne rouge :-)
The first 40k were pretty vile; not entirely sure why as it didn't seem to be particularly nasty route-wise. It was however absolutely freezing, and my feet in particular were really suffering, which I guess might have been the problem. Note to self: always take the damn overshoes. There was a point around here when I seriously considered bailing (on the grounds that if I felt this rotten now how was I going to feel in 200k time...) but thankfully a hot cross bun & squash at the first control, and the sun finally starting to provide some actual heat, improved things.
Unusually for me, I reached the Woburn control to find plenty of other riders still milling around (I have hitherto tended to be way off the back), which was also a bit cheering. A lot of the next bit was really beautiful, especially through Woburn Park where there were deer! And blue sky, trees, birds, etc etc. Pretty!
As a rule, when someone says to you "It's a lot flatter after X" they may mean one of several things:
1) I have no idea what it's like but I want to cheer you up.
2) I have no idea what it's like but I want to cheer myself up.
3) Last time I rode this there was a tailwind after X.
4) Last time I rode this I had 4 1/2 chocolate bars & 2 bananas at X so I was bloody flying.
5) I can't remember anything after X from the last time I rode this so I'm assuming that it was unexceptionable rather than that my brain is protecting me from the horror.
What they virtually never mean is:
6) It's a lot flatter after X.
However! On this occasion the chap who said this was actually, it seems, reasonably correct, & the first half of the bit after Woburn was nice and fast.
Rode with a chap on an Airnimal visiting from Hong Kong for a while - his first Audax, and he seemed to be doing pretty well. The last 20k or so to the next control (T-somewhere Farm Centre) it was getting a bit windy, and I was definitely starting to feel it.
Baked potato & beans at the Farm Centre, & a chat to various other people feeding themselves, then off for another fairly tough 40k into the wind. Arrived at the Little Chef feeling pretty wiped, but the All-Day Veggie Breakfast (which can be made vegan!) was a very good thing for revitalising purposes. Plus I put my bars back to where they had been before I started fiddling with them before the ride (oops) & found that suddenly lots of the aches went away. Evidently Mr Hewitt knows rather better than I do about bar height...
Bit of a drag out of the Little Chef control, and saddle slippage for about the millionth time had me stopping to fiddle with it. Whereupon I hooked up with a small group of riders from Willesden for a bit, which was nice. I also discovered the secret to overcoming my lack-of-nerve issues on descents: be sufficiently tired that the concern about Messy Head-Impact Death is overwhelmed by the concern about Not Wasting Any Of My Precious Potential Energy. Brakes? What're those?
It was roughly this point at which my legs started behaving themselves, at last. Inadvertently rode straight off the front of the Willesden guys (sort of assumed they were behind me, & then looked back & no sign), with very little input from the brain other than a polite suggestion that my legs might like to keep going round for a bit. 25k to the next control felt great. Baffling! Another chat with a bunch of folk at the next Little Chef (with a slightly grumpy waitress), and intended to start out with Pete, Hilary, & someone else, but turned out that my legs were still behaving & rode straight of the front there as well.
The last stage was 60k, of which about 45k was absolutely fine, and the last 15 was OKish - not physically that much of a struggle, but mentally I was getting to the AM I NEARLY THERE YET? stage. Over the Chilterns was reasonably short-and-sharp (which I like better, I think, than long-and-gradual), and conquered without too much hassle with the lovely granny ring. Took an alternate route back (via A413, A40, B4something) on Local Advice, which was prob faster but a bit dull. Mind you, I don't like country lanes in the dark; nice big streetlit A-roads suit me better.
Brief circuit round Ruislip (whoops) & into the Arrivee. Ate sandwiches & then set off for the 30k home, having missed my last tube by about 80min. The last half of that was v tough indeed, despite nice chats with bus drivers ("Where have you been to?" "300k around Ruislip" "You are a very impressive woman!" Bless.), but worth it for pleasure of Own Shower and Own Bed. So with that & the 12k to the start from Ealing, close to 350k for the day.
It was v nice to be sufficiently of a speed with at least some folk (albeit the back markers!) that I could chat to people at controls. I quite like riding on my own on Audaxes (partly because it's about the only time I get to spend on my own ever when I'm not supposed to be Doing Something; partly because I like to let my legs set their own pace) but it's reassuring to encounter other people at intervals. Also I think this is the first Audax I've done that I wasn't lanterne rouge :-)
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(I agree with the bus driver)
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cheers!
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(I'm reasonably confident about the 400k, after 350k total on Sunday. Bit more worried about the 600k, mostly cos of the sleep dep issue).
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40min on a 747
2hr on a TGV
5hr in a car at motorway speeds
That's a long way on a bike! How long would it take you?
(Still very impressed BTW).
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Being within the time limit = requirement for qualifying for Insane French Ride. If I don't make it on the first go I can either decide that it ain't happening this year (I have after all thrown myself in at the deep end a bit here!), or have another bash on another ride at some point in the following 3 weeks (qualifying period ends mid-June). Option will depend on why I didn't manage it & by how much. With luck I'll scrape through & it'll be OK anyway :-)
Unfortunately I am slow enough that I'm not likely to get that much sleep in, which is going to slow me down on the second half.
The nice thing about Audax though is that whilst a certain level of physical competence/fitness is required, it's much more about bloodymindedness, which I am rather better equipped with :-) If you sit on the bike & keep turning the pedals, eventually you will get there.
(Also flapjacks & fizzy drinks help. Which is nice as normally sugar gives me a headache.)
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You may want to think about whether that computes... If being tired will slow you down significantly, having a kip might reduce rather than increase your overall time. I did a very rough back-of-the-envelope calculation and figured that a 2h sleep at the halfway point would have to improve your speed by slightly less than 2km/h to break even. That's with all sorts of bogus estimates, mind, so you'd want to think more carefully, but it's probably worth pondering?
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I too have a lack-of-nerve on descents, and I think I was close to entirely wearing out my back brake-blocks on Monday. It's silly: on a steep descent I'll brake myself back to around 16 mph and feel terrified, but as soon as it flattens out a bit I don't even notice 20mph as fast, and 25+ isn't all that scary.
My longest in a day is still 90 miles, so I'm as impressed as the bus drivers, if not more so!
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I liked the park! I do not remember anything steep. Maybe I got to miss that bit (I think there was a road which went off to our left which looked steep). The Chilterns, now, that was steep.
KWYM about descent speed. Things that have helped me improve:
- practicing cornering by leaning (on flat roads first, moving up to littler hills) - gives me more confidence in my ability to get round the corner at speed.
- more confidence in stopping power of brakes (again by trying it out on less steep hills first).
- air-braking instead of brake-braking.
- the discovery that if you put weight on the pedal outside of the corner you're coming into, you corner better.
Mostly just practice, though. I can do 25-30 quite happily on middling-steep hills (& more if I can see a fully clear road & a hill coming up on the other side :-) ); very steep though & I still get nervous more from speed of acceleration than speed per se.
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In a good way ;)
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Thank you. I think. ;)
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Though in fact I am afraid that I let my legs calculate the optimum speed to cycle, & then leave them to it.
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(A good graphical explanation of the theory I'm on about is here, incidentally, since you do reportedly have your geek hat on)
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This also I think ties in with a discussion I've been having on a cycling forum I'm on, about whether the optimum strategy (for both speed & energy) is to hammer it uphill & take a normal pace downhill/on the flat, or vice versa (or some other combination). Rough calculations have indicated that the correct thing to do is to push harder uphill & take it easy the rest of the time. Which is interesting as I tend to take it very easy uphill; I'm going to try doing the other thing on tomorrow's 400k ride, at least initially. It's to do with the fact that uphills impact much more on your overall speed (because on any given hill you will spend, say, 10min going up it at 8mph, & then only 2min going down it at 20mph, & therefore the 8mph has more impact on the speed calculation).
There's Complications in the form of how you use energy, though - at below 70% or so of max heart rate you can mostly use fat stores, whereas above that (i.e. if hammering it up a hill!) you start burning up the carbs, & that leads to falling over if you don't stick more food in yourself regularly. (flapjacks & Coke!) Plus there's the things that anaerobic exercise do to your legs. What I really need to do is increase my aerobic threshold.
(sorry, went off on a bit of a tangent there!)
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Ultimately I suspect this is in some way analogous to the various proposed refinements to simple speed-to-fly theory, which attempt to take into account the fact that one's altitude is finite. I have yet to read up on these in detail, but I gather the executive summary is just the intuitive "get less picky about lift as you get lower".
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Love the 'after X' thing!
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(Anonymous) 2007-04-12 05:16 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
By the way, did they mark the km markings on the road? I thought I saw a km marking in pink chalk on the road driving home but was didn't see properly.
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The deer park is lovely!
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Do they think recumbents are cheating?
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Bents are *entirely* acceptable. As is basically any other form of human-propelled cycle-ish thing (I've seen folk on fixed, MTBs, racing bikes, tourers, hybrids, recumbents, trikes, etc etc. And some variations in the middle.).
The doing-a-loop is a little irritating for those of us who get to places by public transport, but it does mean that people who get there by car (most folk, really; and tbh they're easier to do by car because tend to start in Countryside and/or at unsociable hours) can do so, and also that for some rides you can leave kit at the start/end & pick it up later. Dry/clean clothes, that sort of thing. Although I rarely bother. Easier for the organisers, too, I guess (they'll likely be close to home so when they've finished checking people back in they haven't got far to go! In the case of this ride the finish *was* someone's house...)
Weather is kind of unavoidable ;-) although you can always not-start after entering if it's too vile.
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solaris ssh cursor keys
(at least from where I am querying -- I think it changes by country)
It was quite a surprise since the page in question is in O'reilly.
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